Child and Spousal Maintenance in Switzerland: No Percentage Table

If you searched alimente or unterhalt expecting a percentage of the paying parent's income, or a table that spits out a number once you enter an income and a number of children, Swiss law does not work that way, and that gap is itself the most important thing to understand before anything else on this page. Switzerland calculates child and spousal maintenance through a needs based method, and the country's highest court has expressly ruled out both percentage formulas and reference tables as ways of getting there.

That is a real departure from what a reader arriving from Austrian or German content is likely to expect, since both of those systems lean on percentage guidance in everyday practice. This page explains the two step method the Bundesgericht actually requires, what each step is trying to achieve, and why no calculator, including one built specifically for this page, could responsibly hand back a reliable number.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Swiss law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

There is no percentage, and that is the actual rule, not a gap in this page

A reader who has looked at German or Austrian material will likely have encountered some version of a percentage guideline, a fixed share of net income scaled by the number and age of children. Nothing equivalent exists in Swiss law, and this is not an oversight in how Switzerland regulates maintenance. It is a deliberate legal conclusion, and the country's Bundesgericht has said so in the clearest possible terms.

BGE 147 III 265: percentage methods and tables are both explicitly barred

BGE 147 III 265 is the leading decision governing how Swiss courts calculate child maintenance, and the Bundesgericht used it to end years of inconsistent approaches across cantons. The decision states plainly that abstract methods, and percentage methods in particular, are impermissible, using almost that exact language: Unzulässigkeit abstrakter Methoden, namentlich von Quotenmethoden. It goes on to rule out reference tables just as directly: Unzulässigkeit der Verwendung von Tabellen.

The court made the two step method with surplus distribution, the zweistufige Methode mit Überschussverteilung, binding nationwide for every kind of child maintenance calculation. That single decision is the reason a Swiss lawyer will not hand a client a percentage on the spot the way a German or Austrian practitioner sometimes will, and it is the reason this page cannot responsibly offer one either.

Why the Bundesgericht stepped in: years of inconsistent cantonal practice

Before this ruling, the Regeste itself describes a departure from what it calls Methodenpluralismus, a plurality of competing calculation methods used inconsistently from canton to canton and sometimes from court to court within the same canton. Some of that earlier practice did lean on percentage shortcuts or informal tables, which is exactly why a reader searching in German still finds material describing them as though they were current Swiss law. BGE 147 III 265 replaced that plurality with one binding method, applicable the same way regardless of which canton hears the case.

The protected subsistence minimum comes from official guidance, not from the court's own judgment

The protected subsistence minimum referenced in the two step method is not invented case by case. It is calculated with reference to the betreibungsrechtliches Existenzminimum guidelines coordinated by cantonal debt enforcement authorities, the same Existenzminimum concept used in ordinary debt enforcement proceedings under the SchKG. This is a real, published set of guidelines covering costs such as basic living expenses, housing, and health insurance premiums, not a number the court invents fresh for the specific family in front of it.

A conceptual walk through the two steps

Picture two parents with a child living primarily with one of them. Step one adds up both parents' actual net income and subtracts each one's actual reasonable expenses, arriving at what is genuinely available and what each parent genuinely needs, rather than guessing from a salary bracket. Step two then works down the priority order: the caregiving parent's own Existenzminimum first, then the child's cash needs, then Betreuungsunterhalt for the caregiving parent's reduced capacity to earn, then any spousal maintenance, with whatever is left over split according to the court's judgment rather than a further fixed formula.

Change any one input, a lower rent, a second job, a shift in who provides how much daily care, and the output changes with it. That sensitivity to the real facts is the entire reason no static number or table could stand in for running the method itself.

How the two step method with surplus distribution actually works

The first step establishes each party's actual financial means and their actual needs, expressed as the amount required to live at an appropriate standard, not a notional figure. Both parents' real income and real, reasonable expenses go into this step, not a percentage of gross salary.

The second step allocates what is available in a fixed order. It prioritizes first each maintenance obligor's own enforcement law minimum, the betreibungsrechtliches Existenzminimum, essentially a subsistence floor protected from enforcement, then the minor child's Barunterhalt, cash maintenance, then Betreuungsunterhalt, care compensation maintenance, then any post marital or spousal maintenance, working up toward a broader family law minimum standard as resources allow. Any remaining surplus once every tier is covered gets distributed at the court's discretion, generally weighting adults and children differently, referred to as grosse und kleine Köpfe, literally big heads and small heads.

Art. 276a ZGB reinforces this ordering directly for minors: a minor child's maintenance claim takes priority over other family law maintenance obligations. A court may only depart from that priority in justified cases, particularly to avoid disadvantaging an adult child who is still entitled to maintenance.

What child maintenance actually covers

Under Art. 276 ZGB, child maintenance is delivered through care, upbringing and money payment together, not cash alone. Each parent contributes according to their own capacity, and the child is expected to cover what it reasonably can from its own earnings or resources first.

Betreuungsunterhalt sits inside this framework. It rests on Art. 285 ZGB, which states that the maintenance contribution also serves to guarantee the child's care by the parents or by third parties. That provision was added as part of the 2015 Kindesunterhalt reform, in force since 1 January 2017, and it is the statutory basis for compensating a caregiving parent whose earning capacity is reduced by looking after the child, rather than treating unpaid care work as invisible to the calculation.

Maintenance normally runs until the child reaches majority, and Art. 277 ZGB extends it further where the child has not yet completed an appropriate education by then, so long as continuing to pay remains reasonable for the parents given the whole circumstances. Art. 286 ZGB lets a court build in automatic adjustment for defined changes in the child's needs or the parents' means, and allows either parent or the child to ask for a fresh assessment if circumstances change significantly.

Post divorce spousal maintenance: also a factors test, not a formula

Art. 125 ZGB governs spousal maintenance after divorce, and it works the same way as child maintenance in one important respect: no percentage sits anywhere in the statute. A spouse is owed an appropriate contribution only where they cannot reasonably be expected to cover their own appropriate needs themselves, including adequate provision for retirement.

The court weighs a list of factors before deciding whether a contribution is owed at all, and if so how much and for how long: how the couple divided responsibilities during the marriage, how long the marriage lasted, the standard of living during the marriage, and the age and health of each spouse, among other considerations the statute leaves open ended. This is deliberately not reducible to a single multiplier of income and years married.

Spousal maintenance is assessed only after the minor child's needs are addressed, consistent with the priority order described above. A financially stronger spouse cannot use a spousal maintenance request to reduce what is available for the child first, since Art. 276a ZGB and the two step method both push in the same direction, protecting the child's claim ahead of the adult's.

Why this means no calculator can give you a reliable number

Being honest about this is the actual service this page can provide. A method built around real income, real expenses, a protected subsistence minimum, and a discretionary surplus split cannot be compressed into a small set of inputs the way a percentage table can. Two families with identical incomes and an identical number of children can land on materially different maintenance figures once actual rent, actual childcare costs, actual care split, and actual second job situations are factored in.

What actually determines the outcome is the quality of the financial picture put in front of the court or agreed between the parents: accurate income documentation for both parents, a realistic accounting of the child's actual needs, and a clear description of who is providing how much day to day care. A lawyer, a mediator, or the Kindesschutzbehörde working through the real two step calculation with real figures will get closer to the right number than any generic tool ever could, precisely because the method itself was designed to resist shortcuts.

Where this fits with the rest of Swiss family law

This page covers how much is owed once care and contact are already understood. For who holds the legal authority to make decisions for a child in the first place, see our joint custody page. For the grounds a Swiss court will accept for the divorce itself, see our divorce page, including the pension splitting that happens alongside maintenance. For the wider cluster, start at our family law hub, and for the rest of Swiss law our guide to Swiss law covers the broader picture.